Many years ago, I was flying from New York to Zagreb, in what was then Yugoslavia. I flew JAT, an airline that no longer exists (for reasons that might be clear by the end of this story.) The plane, an L1011, was barely a third full, so I stretched out over several seats and went to sleep.
When I awoke, much later, I heard the flight attendant announcing, “Prepare to land in Belgrade.”
Belgrade!! Yes, it’s fairly close to Zagreb–except for the mountain range in between them!
I knew that the plane was scheduled to continue on to Belgrade after stopping in Zagreb, but how could I have missed the landing in Zagreb? Had I slept that soundly ?
Alarmed, I approached the flight attendant.
Her English was poor, but good enough. “No landing in Zagreb,” she said. “Not enough people want to get off there.”
Well. It seems only seven of us were Zagreb-bound. Not enough, apparently, for the pilot to go to the trouble of landing the plane there.
Upon arriving in Belgrade, the seven of us, strangers to each other without a common language, were issued slips of torn brown paper with “B-7″ hand-written on them. Like sheep, we proceeded to Gate B-7 where the posted departure read “Zurich/Munich.” We boarded anyway.
The plane did take us to Zagreb, much to the surprise of the passengers flying to Zurich and Munich, where, I presume, the plane did eventually go.
I arrived in Zagreb a mere twelve hours after the scheduled arrival.
Wanna guess when my luggage finally arrived?